A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays eBook

The existence of pain has been shown to be a circumstance
which the human mind regards with dissatisfaction,
and of which it desires the cessation. It is
equally according to its nature to desire that the
advantages to be enjoyed by a limited number of persons
should be enjoyed equally by all. This proposition
is supported by the evidence of indisputable facts.
Tell some ungarbled tale of a number of persons being
made the victims of the enjoyments of one, and he
who would appeal in favour of any system which might
produce such an evil to the primary emotions of our
nature, would have nothing to reply. Let two
persons, equally strangers, make application for some
benefit in the possession of a third to bestow, and
to which he feels that they have an equal claim.
They are both sensitive beings; pleasure and pain
affect them alike.

CHAPTER II

It is foreign to the general scope of this little
treatise to encumber a simple argument by controverting
any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism.
But there are two; the first, the basis of all political
mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect
of religious error, which it seems useful to refute.

First, it is inquired, ’Wherefore should a man
be benevolent and just?’ The answer has been
given in the preceding chapter.

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote
the happiness of mankind, he demands a mathematical
or metaphysical reason for a moral action. The
absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent, but
not less real than the exacting a moral reason for
a mathematical or metaphysical fact. If any person
should refuse to admit that all the radii of a circle
are of equal length, or that human actions are necessarily
determined by motives, until it could be proved that
these radii and these actions uniformly tended to the
production of the greatest general good, who would
not wonder at the unreasonable and capricious association
of his ideas?

The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine,
at this advanced era of human intellect, be held excused
from entering into a controversy with those reasoners,
if such there are, who would claim an exemption from
its decrees in favour of any one among those diversified
systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which,
under the name of religions, have in various ages and
countries prevailed among mankind. Besides that
if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal torture
or happiness will ensue as the consequence of certain
actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a
standard to determine what actions were right and wrong,
even if this pretended revelation, which is by no
means the case, had furnished us with a complete catalogue
of them. The character of actions as virtuous
or vicious would by no means be determined alone by
the personal advantage or disadvantage of each moral
agent individually considered. Indeed, an action